Director-UX Researcher

American Express•New York, NY

11d

About The Position

American Express UX Research shapes experiences grounded in deep customer understanding. As artificial intelligence changes how people discover, decide, and act, the organization is advancing its research capabilities to understand evolving relationships between people and intelligent systems. This senior individual-contributor role leads complex research initiatives, influences consequential product and experience decisions, and advances research practices and capabilities across the organization, with a focus on AI-powered and agentic experiences. The researcher will bring exceptional qualitative research expertise, strategic thinking, and methodological innovation. The role requires mastery of generative and exploratory research, synthesis, storytelling, and senior-leader influence. The researcher will also advance research excellence through thought leadership, mentorship, and the development of innovative methods and frameworks.

Requirements

10+ years of UX research or applied research experience, including a substantial track record leading complex, strategically significant generative research programs.
Expertise in qualitative research, including advanced interviewing, contextual inquiry, research design, and interpretive synthesis, with the ability to develop original insights and conceptual frameworks.
Experience researching AI-powered, conversational, adaptive, or similarly complex emerging technologies, and understanding of the methodological challenges associated with intelligent systems.
Ability to develop or substantially advance research methodologies, evaluation frameworks, or approaches that influence research practice beyond individual projects.
Strategic judgment and demonstrated ability to influence director-, VP-, or executive-level stakeholders through compelling evidence, original thinking, and sophisticated storytelling.
Experience providing research thought leadership across teams or complex programs, including guiding research direction, advising on methods, mentoring researchers, and elevating research standards.
Strong quantitative literacy and ability to integrate qualitative research, behavioral analytics, survey data, customer feedback, and other evidence into strategically meaningful insights.
Ability to navigate ambiguity, challenge established assumptions, and connect customer understanding with business strategy, emerging technologies, and experience opportunities.
Eligibility to work in the United States; American Express will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.

Nice To Haves

Direct experience researching generative AI, LLM-based experiences, autonomous agents, or human-AI collaboration.
Experience evaluating trust, delegation, comprehension, customer control, and error recovery in AI-powered experiences.
Experience developing reusable research methods or evaluation frameworks adopted across multiple product teams.
Experience in financial services or other complex, highly regulated environments.

Responsibilities

Provide research leadership for complex, high-impact AI initiatives by framing critical customer questions and establishing forward-looking research agendas.
Partner with senior Product, Design, Engineering, and business leaders to identify opportunities, challenge assumptions, and influence experience strategy and investment decisions.
Lead sophisticated qualitative research to uncover customer motivations, behaviors, unmet needs, and mental models.
Select, combine, and adapt established and innovative methods, including contextual inquiry, longitudinal studies, behavioral simulations, and research in live or simulated AI environments.
Develop and validate methods for investigating human-AI interaction, including trust, transparency, delegation, decision-making, and customer control.
Establish reusable frameworks and measures for evaluating comprehension, usefulness, task effectiveness, and error recovery in agentic experiences.
Integrate qualitative and quantitative evidence, behavioral data, and emerging customer signals to develop original insights and conceptual frameworks.
Identify patterns, tensions, and opportunities that inform experience principles, product direction, and strategic decisions.
Turn complex research into compelling narratives, conceptual models, and executive-ready recommendations for senior leaders.
Advise senior Product, Design, Technology, and Business leaders, connecting customer understanding with business objectives, technical possibilities, and emerging opportunities.
Constructively challenge assumptions and ensure customer evidence informs consequential decisions.
Guide complex methodological decisions, elevate research quality, and coach researchers across multidisciplinary teams.
Advance scalable research capabilities through reusable methodologies, evaluation frameworks, and practice standards.
Explore emerging AI-enabled research tools and workflows while ensuring innovation supports research quality, effectiveness, and responsible practice.